November 11, 2010

"Afterwords" (IM William Matthews) by Diann Blakely

Your latest postcard's glossy lupines spike In high-pitched hues: "powder puffs," you'd describe themIf, between acts, we sipped red house wine By a glass wall, smoke blurring in stained plumes,"For dens of vain wildlife." I'd grin, surprised,As always, to recall your size-12 tracksFirst loped Ohio fields. Sly, you'd revise:"For female masochists, or do you thinkThat's a tautology?" O ariasOf laughter. O arias and arteriesAnd let's howl at the present tense. At thisLast card, a bad joke best cracked sotto voceBy some gout-ridden, nameless demoteeWhose age-diminuendoed range has chewedAt his career. Are career and cariesUnfriendly cousins to "decay," black snoodOf the same hue as Death's stained robe? And care?And what of carnivore, that scene-chewerWho prowls through flora glossy as this card's,Mailed the day you died? Both of us were suckersFor etymology, still-hungry orphansLike those two straining for the wolf's stone tits,Mouths open and now art. O originsAnd terminals, after Terminus,The god of borders: those between close friendsWho mute a howling loneliness with cards; Those, too, between the tame and wild. Dusk-stained, My kitchen's perfumed with small reddish shardsOf Puppy Chow, and now the gluey smellOf tear-blurred mail. "The hour of the wolf,"Said forebears after learning to encircleTheir villages with walls: the dusk-lit gulfWhere housepet and killer become the same--O arteries o howl o terminus--As flowers and teeth, or flesh and its shade.

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"Afterwords" (IM William Matthews) by Diann Blakely

Your latest postcard's glossy lupines spike In high-pitched hues: "powder puffs," you'd describe themIf, between acts, we sipped red house wine By a glass wall, smoke blurring in stained plumes,"For dens of vain wildlife." I'd grin, surprised,As always, to recall your size-12 tracksFirst loped Ohio fields. Sly, you'd revise:"For female masochists, or do you thinkThat's a tautology?" O ariasOf laughter. O arias and arteriesAnd let's howl at the present tense. At thisLast card, a bad joke best cracked sotto voceBy some gout-ridden, nameless demoteeWhose age-diminuendoed range has chewedAt his career. Are career and cariesUnfriendly cousins to "decay," black snoodOf the same hue as Death's stained robe? And care?And what of carnivore, that scene-chewerWho prowls through flora glossy as this card's,Mailed the day you died? Both of us were suckersFor etymology, still-hungry orphansLike those two straining for the wolf's stone tits,Mouths open and now art. O originsAnd terminals, after Terminus,The god of borders: those between close friendsWho mute a howling loneliness with cards; Those, too, between the tame and wild. Dusk-stained, My kitchen's perfumed with small reddish shardsOf Puppy Chow, and now the gluey smellOf tear-blurred mail. "The hour of the wolf,"Said forebears after learning to encircleTheir villages with walls: the dusk-lit gulfWhere housepet and killer become the same--O arteries o howl o terminus--As flowers and teeth, or flesh and its shade.